Cooking and baking were always part of Linda Burrell’s life. Her mother Jessie loved to prepare and share hearty, visually appealing meals and desserts. Burrell, who was born in South Carolina and grew up in Massachusetts, frequently perused her mom’s cookbooks and experimented with recipes, often tweaking them to make them her own.
That passion for cooking and baking led Burrell to form Cakes by Linda Kay in 2011. Burrell makes specialty cakes for any occasion, and cookies, cobbler, pie, cupcakes and more. She’ll also make just about any sweet treat a customer requests. Burrell’s specialty is sweet potato cobbler, a treat that her mother often made and was a favorite with relatives.
Sweet potato cobbler is likely familiar to those with Southern roots, but many people in Milwaukee had never heard of the treat. Burrell started making them for farmers markets and events, and the sweet potato cobbler was a hit, even with people that swore they didn’t like sweet potatoes but were won over when they sampled the treat.
Burrell bakes most items from scratch, and she rents a commercial kitchen. Other customer favorites include red velvet cake, caramel cake, sweet potato or pumpkin pie, peach or apple cobbler, chocolate cake, chocolate-covered roasted peanuts, and scratch-made banana pudding, a treat Burrell said older generations often recognize and love from their childhood.
Growing up in the home kitchen and watching family members bake can provide the best culinary education, and Burrell learned volumes while baking with her mother and experimenting with recipes. That’s why today she has the confidence to tackle a request from a customer—whether or not she’s made the item before.
“If a customer approaches me and asks for a strawberry rhubarb pie, even if I’ve never made one, but by the end of the day, I could produce one. I love that type of challenge,” Burrell said. She also hears from people who have a cherished family recipe and asks her to duplicate it. “I tell them, ‘We’ll find a way to work it out.’”
One example is when a vendor at Fondy Farmers Market gave Burrell some peaches and told her to do something with them. Rather than making her usual peach cobbler, she made a peach cream cake with crumbly topping. Embodying her mother’s spirit of building social connections through food, she shared the cake with Venice Williams, executive director of Alice’s Garden, where Burrell has a small garden.
Burrell gets carrots for her carrot cake, and zucchini for her zucchini bread, from her garden. She sources other ingredients from local vendors when possible.
“When you cook for people, it brings a smile to their faces and their tummies. You share love for people by preparing food for them,” Burrell said.
Burrell sells her treats at farmers markets and events. This winter she’ll be at the Outpost Makers Market, held Thursday (10 a.m.-2 p.m.) and Saturday (12-2 p.m.) at the Wellness Commons on 16th and North Avenue. In February, she will participate in Carnival Milwaukee, a tasting event held by the Urban Economic Development Association. Burrell takes custom orders, especially with the busy holidays approaching. “If people don’t want to bake, I’ll gladly do it for them,” she said.
For more information, call 414-202-8876 or visit facebook.com/cakesbylindakay.
